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During his tenure in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, he said the board had minimal interaction with the administrations, and “certainly no communication regarding the hiring of the postmaster general.”

The board hired two search firms to assist in the selection process by conducting a nationwide search. One of them, Russell Reynolds Associates, compiled a database of prospective candidates and provided a subset of dozens of names it deemed most promising to the board.

Mr. DeJoy’s name was not among those initially provided, according to people familiar with the process. But Mr. Duncan raised Mr. DeJoy’s name during a discussion among board members about other prospective candidates. Mr. Duncan, who has been involved in a super PAC that supports Mr. Trump’s re-election, had met Mr. DeJoy through Mr. DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos. Both had been appointed by Mr. Trump to help lead the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.

After the board received a readout from Russell Reynolds, which indicated that Mr. DeJoy was already in the firm’s database and was qualified, Mr. Barger went to lunch with Mr. DeJoy to assess his interest in, and suitability for, the post.

Mr. Barger was impressed, and reported his impressions to the full board the same day. “It’s uncommon to find somebody from outside the Postal Service who also has a history of success working with the Postal Service,” Mr. Barger said in an interview on Friday.

Nearly two months after the meeting in Mr. Mnuchin’s office about the search process, Mr. Duncan wrote a follow-up letter to the Treasury secretary indicating that the board had “narrowed the search to a small number of finalists, each of whom would serve the country well.”

Mr. Barger rejected suggestions that Mr. Mnuchin was playing politics with the Postal Service, noting that Democratic governors had met with top Treasury officials under Mr. Mnuchin. Mr. Mnuchin was not involved in the board’s decision to select Mr. DeJoy, Mr. Barger said, adding that the board “viewed Secretary Mnuchin as a stakeholder who was doing his job in having an interest in how our process was moving forward, but certainly nothing more than that.”